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Monday, 1 December 2008

Mumbai 11/27: the Pakistan Army's Alibi (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Since the terror attacks
on Mumbai five days ago, key Western intelligence agencies have been shown
documented proof that the operation was carried out by squads trained by
regular elements of the Pakistan army.

While the field training took place at a
farm run by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, near Muzaffarabad in
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, fluency in the handling of ordnance was taught at
another ISI safe house on the outskirts of Karachi.

Pakistan has done little to create
deniability about these connections or earlier links discovered by U.S.
intelligence agencies between the ISI and the July 7 bombing of the Indian
Embassy in Kabul.

The Pakistan army has made little secret of
the fact that the top priority of its intelligence operations is to reverse
India’s path toward social stability and economic growth. Still, why were so
many tell-tale clues left behind in these attacks that enraged the Indian
public and made the world aware that India is the softest terrorist target
among the major democracies?

Analysts piecing together the documentation
are divided over whether army chief Ashfaq Kiyani was himself in the loop on
the Mumbai attacks. It is certain that at least two corps commanders were,
however, both of whom provided materiel and arranged training for the 70-odd
terrorists tasked with the Mumbai operations.

Their hope was that India would respond to
the attacks the way it did to a failed bid to kill members of Parliament in
2001 – by mobilizing troops on the Pakistan border and creating an expectation
that a full-scale, conventional India-Pakistan war was imminent. At that time
Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's unwise decision to "bluff" the
Pakistanis into cooperating with India by the threat of war boomeranged on New
Delhi. Foreign missions evacuated their nationals in a panic and business
confidence plunged.

Even at that time, it was known to
policymakers in most major capitals that India was bluffing, and that the
genial Vajpayee would never actually go to war. Yet they participated in the
hysteria, especially the United States, where there is a thriving industry
centered around "conflict resolution specialists" whose
"mission" is to stop India and Pakistan from going to war with each
other.

Both countries are aware that a war would
be suicidal for Pakistan and severely damaging for India. So they will be able
to toast their imagined success in keeping the peace, thereby securing more
funding from their less-informed patrons.

Those within the military establishment in
Pakistan who funded, equipped and motivated the Mumbai operation are now
waiting for the government of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to go the
way of Vajpayee and send additional Indian troops to the border. In
anticipation of such a move, they have already frozen selected deployments of
reinforcements to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas – the frontier region
of Pakistan that has become the new home of al-Qaida – and issued provisional
orders for sending additional forces and equipment to the border with India.

The reason is simple: Having no desire to
eliminate al-Qaida, these military commanders are seeking to use the
"threat from India" as an excuse for inaction on the western
frontier. They will seek to explain their patent unwillingness to engage the
terrorists by pointing to the need to bolster defenses against an Indian
attack.

Unfortunately for them, this time around
there is zero chance of India repeating the mistake of 2002, which was to
mobilize when it was clear that war was never going to be an option. Also,
intelligence agencies worldwide have better reach into the Pakistan military
than previously. Therefore, the next war involving Indian and Pakistani troops
is likely to be both sides acting together to take out the jihadis. But this
will have to await a cleansing of the jihadi elements from the officer corps of
the Pakistan army, a necessary process that the present army chief is
resisting.

Those Western commentators and analysts
cultivated by the Pakistan army have begun churning out analyses speaking of
"heightened tensions" between India and Pakistan. Foolishly, U.S.
President George W. Bush has fanned the flames of such inspired speculation by
inserting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice into the region, rather than
adopting an attitude of "business as usual." Rice, in desperate need
of some – any – perceived diplomatic success, can be expected to follow the
playbook of the South Asia "crisis management specialists" by hinting
at substantive tensions that do not in fact exist, at least on the Indian side.

Aware that both Pakistani President Asif
Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani are blameless with regard to
the Mumbai attacks, the Indian government of Manmohan Singh has been careful
not to place any blame on the civilian leadership in Pakistan.

Mumbai 11/27 was a Pakistan military
operation, in which even the navy was involved in "spotting" likely
Indian coast guard traffic and steering the terrorist vessels away from such
danger. The civilian government had no role in it, nor was it informed of the
planning and execution of the attack.

By continuing to regard the present
Pakistan military as part of the solution to the problem of global terrorism
rather than as a principal target, the United States and its NATO allies are
creating the conditions that will allow jihadis to breed in Pakistan,
Bangladesh, India and Nepal in sufficient numbers to be able to launch attacks
against targets in the United States and Europe.

The civilian administration in Pakistan,
led by Asif Ali Zardari, needs assistance to secure control over the military.
Next the jihadi elements must be purged from the Pakistan officer corps if the
country is to be rescued from the jihadist nightmare into which it has fallen,
undoubtedly due to major policy errors of the Western powers since the 1980s.

Recent statements by U.S. President-elect
Barack Obama reveal a dangerous incomprehension about ground realities in the
region. No "solution" is possible over Kashmir or other pending
India-Pakistan issues until the Pakistan military comes under civilian control
and is cleansed of the jihadi elements that control much of its officer corps.

Those who planned the Mumbai attacks to
create an alibi for their refusal to take out al-Qaida in the tribal regions
will be disappointed. This time India will not fall into the trap laid by the
Pakistan military by sending additional troops to the border and creating war
hysteria that would divert attention away from the ongoing campaign against
al-Qaida.

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About Prof. MD Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal University, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MDNalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.